iran, iraq, us:
The three-month-old US plan to regain control of Baghdad is slow to show results despite the arrival of four more US brigades. Security in the heart of the city may be a little better but the US and the Iraqi government are nowhere near dealing a knockout blow to the Sunn insurgency or the Shia militias.
(...) In an interview in Baghdad he laughed as he pointed that Iran and the US both genuinely support the present Iraqi government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Iranian stance contrasts with Arab states such as Saudi Arabia where the King refuses to meet Mr Maliki. "Ironically," says Mr Zebari, "the Iranian statement on majority rule in Iraq [at the conference on Iraq at Sharm el-Sheikh ten days ago] agrees entirely with what we and the Americans say."
(...) His words are a recipe for a long conflict. As soon as the US and Britain overthrew Saddam Hussein, the detested enemy of Iran, in 2003 Iranian influence in Iraq and power in the Gulf increased. When the Shia religious parties, sympathetic to the clerical regime in Tehran, won the parliamentary elections in Iraq in 2005 Iranian influence grew again. It has proved impossible for the US to reverse this trend which is of its own making.
(...) But it was noticeable in February that when al-Sadr told his Mehdi Army militia to hold back from attacking the Americans and stockpile their arms he was obeyed. Underestimating the Sadrist movement has been a repeated American and British mistake in Iraq since 2003. Another frequent error has been to believe that the Shia alliance, so powerful because the Shia are 60 per cent of the population, is always on the verge of collapse. Even the Sunni opposition to al Qaida may lead the insurgents to concentrate on shooting Americans rather than blowing up Shia street traders.
(...) Peace, when it finally comes to Iraq, will inevitably be the result of a package deal of which a timetable for a US withdrawal is likely to be a central part. Despite Mr Cheney's claim that the US still seeks victory in Iraq-American failure--going by its original high ambitions--has long been inevitable. Iran and Syria are important players in Iraq that cannot be ignored. The popularly elected Shia-Kurdish government cannot be remade at Americans and British request because it does not go along with their wishes.
(...) President Bush's strategy, announced in January, of confronting Iran and seeking to pacify Baghdad by sending US troop reinforcements is not working.